A Woodcut and Its Wanderings in Seventeenth-Century England · Margreta de Grazia and Peter...

A Woodcut and Its Wanderings in Seventeenth-Century England

Marsh, C. (2016). A Woodcut and Its Wanderings in Seventeenth-Century England. Huntington LibraryQuarterly, 79(2), 245-262. https://doi.org/10.1353/hlq.2016.0010

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huntington library quarterly | vol. 79, no. 2 245

� the majority of seventeenth-century ballad illustrations depictindividual human figures, either male or female, in little black boxes. The beauty ofsuch generic images was that they enabled publishers and printers to shuffle themaround, reusing old pictures in new configurations on dozens of different ballads,thereby saving themselves the costs associated with commissioning new artwork. Theappeal of this approach has not, however, been readily apparent either to the balladspecialists of the academic world or to the scholars who dip into balladry more occa-sionally while working on something else. Indeed, the recycling habit is one of theprincipal factors underlying the neglect of these woodcuts. There has been a pro-nounced tendency to assume that the reuse of images suggests apathy about their sig-nificance on the part of producers and consumers alike.1 Fortunately, the situation is

1. Natascha Würzbach, The Rise of the English Street Ballad (Cambridge, 1990), 9; Margaret Aston,“Bibles to Ballads: Some Pictorial Migrations in the Reformation,” in Christianity and Community inthe West: Essays for John Bossy, ed. Simon Ditchfield (Aldershot, U.K., 2001), 2, 17–18. See also RobinGanev, Songs of Protest, Songs of Love: Popular Ballads in Eighteenth-Century Britain (Manchester,2009), 14.

A Woodcut and Its Wanderings in Seventeenth-Century England

Christopher Marsh

abstract This essay traces the career of a distinctive woodcut picture thatappears on dozens of seventeenth-century ballad broadsheets. Christopher Marshargues that woodcuts have often been neglected by scholars and that they deservecareful attention. The common habit of redeploying old pictures on new balladsmay, for example, have encouraged consumers to build associations between indi-vidual woodcuts and particular characteristics or themes. In order to understandthe visual aesthetic of early-modern balladry, it is therefore necessary to think infresh and creative ways about the effects of the repetition of pictures on cognition. keywords: relationship between ballads and their illustrations; reuse of wood-cuts in printing; depictions of courtship; role of familiarity in interpretation ofimages

changing under the influence of the so-called visual turn, and a number of authorshave now begun to investigate the role of ballad woodcuts in the generation of mean-ing.2 We are moving, slowly, toward an understanding that, for early modern con-sumers, the appeal of a ballad lay not only in its textual content but also in theinteraction among the words, the images, the melody, and the performance. Each pub-lication was a little web of possibilities in itself, but it also took its part in a far moreextensive web that incorporated the ballad genre as a whole. Of course, this observa-tion makes ballads harder for scholars to digest in a hurry, but it may also help them tounderstand how and why these publications were so very popular, despite texts thatoften seem either monstrously melodramatic or light and trite.

The purpose of this essay is to consider the part played by images in the appealof balladry. In the absence of detailed evidence about contemporary interpretativehabits, what can we surmise from the images themselves about the ways in which thesepictures may have been viewed and understood? How did consumers process them?And how did they respond to the incongruity and repetition that sometimes disap-points or confuses modern minds? This essay argues that woodcuts, like tunes, were acrucial and central component of balladry rather than a feeble decorative extra. Pic-tures, though recycled, were selected and placed with some skill and care, probably set-ting up complex and often unconscious crosscurrents between ballads in the brains ofviewers. They thus took their place in the vast interconnected network of meaningsand references that constituted balladry as a whole. Wandering woodcuts also con-tributed to what Margreta de Grazia and Peter Stallybrass call “the unsettled nature ofthe printed text.”3 Pictures helped to render meanings variable, personal, and unstable.The nature of one’s engagement with a ballad depended—and still depends—on one’sprevious encounters with its constituent parts, including its pictures. The fact thatmost woodcuts were not designed primarily for the individual ballads upon whichthey appeared meant that viewers had to work hard in order to locate or manufacturemeaning. The redeployment of pictures was in fact an incitement to engagement anddebate, rather than a reflection of apathy. The consumer was also a producer, as sug-

� 246 christopher marsh

2. Alexandra Franklin, “The Art of Illustration in Bodleian Broadside Ballads before 1820,”Bodleian Library Record 17, no. 5 (2002): 327–52, and “Making Sense of Ballad Illustrations in the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries,” in Studies in Ephemera: Text and Image in Eighteenth-CenturyPrint, ed. Kevin D. Murphy and Sally O’Driscoll (Lewisburg, Pa., 2013), 169–93; Patricia Fumerton,“Remembering by Dismembering: Databases, Archiving and the Recollection of Seventeenth-Century Broadside Ballads,” in Ballads and Broadsides in Britain, 1500–1800, ed. Patricia Fumertonand Anita Guerrini (Farnham, U.K., 2010), 13–34; Patricia Fumerton, Carl Stahmer, Kris McAbee,and Megan Palmer-Browne, “Vexed Impressions: Toward a Digital Archive of Broadside Ballad Illus-trations,” in Digitizing Medieval and Early Modern Material Culture, ed. Brent Nelson and Melissa Ter-ras (Tempe, Ariz., 2012), 257–85; Theodore Barrow, “From ‘Easter Wedding’ to ‘The Frantick Lover’:The Repeated Woodcut and its Shifting Roles,” in Studies in Ephemera, ed. Murphy and O’Driscoll,219–39. See also James Knapp, “The Bastard Art: Woodcut Illustration in Sixteenth-Century England,”in Printing and Parenting in Early Modern England, ed. Douglas Brooks (Farnham, U.K., 2003), 151–72.

3. Margreta de Grazia and Peter Stallybrass, “The Materiality of the Shakespearean Text,” Shake-speare Quarterly 44, no. 3 (1993): 260.

gested by a wealth of work on popular music in more recent times and by scientificresearch concerning the intricacies of visual cognition.4

Threading and treading a path across the shifting sands of the woodcut worldcan be difficult, so it is time to recruit an experienced native guide. The man picturedin figure 1 was one of the best-known characters in seventeenth-century England. Hisfirst appearance seems to have been in the 1650s, and his attire suggests the second halfof the century rather than the first.5 He was therefore a late starter, but after his arrivalhe proved tireless, striding from ballad to ballad for several decades, caught perpetu-ally in the moment immediately preceding an interpersonal engagement of one sort oranother. He moves from left to right, which, according to cognitive scientists, is thedirection that Western viewers prefer to see represented in pictures, because this is alsothe manner in which they read.6 This man-on-the-move also seems to exude bon-homie. An assessment of his appearance based on early modern advice concerningposture and gesture suggests that he is also manly and of good status: his arm does notdroop; he strikes a balance between the hurry of a mere lackey and the tardiness of agood-for-nothing; he keeps his hat on, evidently not expecting to meet a superior; hedisplays facial hair; and he stands erect while looking straight ahead, thus avoiding theslovenly slouch of a mere peasant. He may even have something to tell us about the his-tory of the handshake, though he is a tease and never quite seals the deal. The work ofvarious scholars suggests that hand-shaking was more strongly associated with friend-ship and reconciliation than with mere meeting and greeting, but that welcomingguests by taking their hands was a courteous and chivalric gesture that could also serveto earn their esteem. It was acceptable for a man to take a woman by the hand, providedthat both parties were aware of the dangerous temptation that might be fueled by suchintimacy. In 1644, John Bulwer took a broader view than that adopted by scholars,associating hand-shaking with friendship, love, benevolence, salutation, entertain-ment, welcoming, reconciliation, and congratulation. With good reason, he declared,“The Hand, that busie instrument, is most talkative.”7 The character in our picture canhelp us to think about handshakes of all sorts, and he will therefore be referred to as the“how-de-do man” in the discussion that follows.

a woodcut and its wanderings � 247

4. See, for example, Keith Negus, Popular Music in Theory: An Introduction (Cambridge, 1996),and Arthur P. Shimamura, Experiencing Art: In the Brain of the Beholder (Oxford, 2013).

5. It is as difficult to date clothes with precision as it is to date ballads, but most or all of the broad-sheets that featured this individual were issued after around 1655. His shoes and hat, together with hiscombination of loose breeches (gathered at the knee), coat, and waistcoat, seem consistent with this.

6. Shimamura, Experiencing Art, 92.7. Herman Roodenburg, “The ‘Hand of Friendship’: Shaking Hands and Other Gestures in the

Dutch Republic,” in A Cultural History of Gesture, ed. Jan Bremmer and Herman Roodenburg (Ithaca,N.Y., 1991), 152–78; Michael J. Braddick, “Introduction,” in The Politics of Gesture: Historical Perspec-tives, ed. Michael J. Braddick (Oxford, 2009), 18; Kim M. Phillips, “Bodily Walls, Windows and Doors:The Politics of Gesture in Late Fifteenth-Century Books for Women,” in Medieval Women: Texts andContexts in Late Medieval Britain, ed. Jocelyn Wogan-Browne et al. (Turnhout, Belgium, 2000),194–95; John Walter, “Gesturing at Authority: Deciphering the Gestural Code of Early Modern Eng-land,” in The Politics of Gesture, ed. Braddick, 96–143; J[ohn] B[ulwer], Chirologia, or, The naturall language of the hand (London, 1644).

We will concentrate on the 104 appearances that the how-de-do man madeon ballads in the Pepys, Roxburghe, and Euing Ballads (a representative group of collections that includes close to 4,000 of the estimated 11,000 extant sheets from seventeenth-century England). Of course, no seventeenth-century consumer wouldhave seen them all, and it is important to remember that levels of engagement musthave covered a spectrum from the fragmentary to the obsessional.8 Only the excep-tionally devoted might have noticed, for example, that the how-de-do man actuallyexisted in at least thirteen subtly different versions. Most of the differences consist insmall details such as the number of blades of grass per clump or the precise shape of thehat, and it seems likely that casual observers perceived most of the pictures as identical.The extent of the variation comes as a surprise even to dedicated scholars, and ourinability to spot the differences at a superficial glance clearly tells us something aboutthe manner in which the human mind processes pictures, tending to assimilate images


8. On fragmentary ballad-consumption, see Fumerton, “Remembering by Dismembering,” 13–34.

figure 1. Detail from “The Famous Sea-Fight between Captain Ward and the Rain-Bow” (1624–80?).Euing 108, EBBA31815. By permission of University of Glasgow Library, Special Collections.

when the differences between them are relatively slight.9 The how-de-do man walksacross ballads issued by twenty-one different individuals, and thus it is apparent thatany publisher worth his salt needed access to a recognizable version.10 He was every-where, and in our central sample of 104 ballads, he can be found in close proximity to108 other woodcuts, many of which were also regularly recycled and therefore highlyfamiliar. The how-de-do man, though never quite touching the flesh of another, was aswell-connected in our giant web as it was possible to be. We are in good hands and wewill follow him across the landscape, pausing now and again to meet some of hisfriends and acquaintances.

�Overwhelmingly, the how-de-do man is a positive presence, a character for whom weare invited to experience feelings of admiration, sympathy, or empathy. All judgmentshere are of course subjective, but it seems that roughly 75 percent of his outings are inthis category. Perhaps we might begin with “A Sweet and Pleasant Sonnet,” uponwhich he plays a happy philosopher, wisely articulating Edward Dyer’s famous lines,“My mind to me a kingdom is, / such perfect joys therein I find.” Here, he is an exem-plary citizen, lacking material wealth but craving none of it because his inwardresources enable him to feel “rich with little store.”11 More frequently, the how-de-doman is a paragon not of philosophical equilibrium but of honest romanticism. On“The Virgins Constancy,” for example, his exemplary status is made explicit in thesubtitle: “’Tis a gallant new Ditty ’twixt William and Kathern, / Their true loves foryoung ones may serve for a pattern.”12 And on “Truths Integrity,” he approaches hissweet heart with a spring in his step to illustrate a song with the optimistic refrain,“Love will find out the way” (fig. 2). The image implies that an embrace is about tooccur, though we must imagine it for ourselves. Although his sweetheart is confinedin a sturdy black box, the how-de-do man will surely use his eager hands to effect anentrance.13

The well-known ballad “Modesty Amazed” tells the tale of an ardent young mannamed Roger who must persuade his sweetheart’s mother that his intentions are honorable. In a clever twist on the normal two-person picture scheme, the designer


9. Shimamura, Experiencing Art, 119–20. Each of the following ballads presents a slightly differentversion of the picture: EBBA 32055, 30356, 30864, 32015, 30809, 31815, 30682, 31159, 31146, 32025, 21721,20658, and 21748.

10. The publishers were E. Andrews, John Andrews, J. Back, C. Bates, James Bissel, J. Blare, P.Brooksby, Richard Burton, J. Clarke, J. Conyers, F. Coles, J. Deacon, W. Gilbertson, A. M[ilbourn], W.O[nley], T. Passinger, W. Thackeray, G. Tracey, T. Vere, W. Whitwood, and J. Wright.

11. “A Sweet and Pleasant Sonnet” (1680–82), Pepys Library, Magdalene College, Cambridge (hereafter PL), Pepys 2.7, EBBA 21665.

12. “The Virgins Constancy” (1678–88), PL, Pepys 4.55, EBBA 21721.13. “Truths Integrity” (1655–58), University of Glasgow Library (hereafter UGL), Euing 358,

EBBA 32055.

has here positioned an additional female figure in between the two lovers (fig. 3).14 Presumably representing the mother, she sits obstructively with her back to Roger, as ifshielding her daughter from his advances. The text informs us that Roger eventuallyproves himself trustworthy and that maternal consent to the match is duly given.15 Inother instances, it is fitting that the how-de-do man, this most honest of wooers, alsoshows himself capable of playing the part of the happy husband. “The Married-MansBest Portion,” for example, presents him striding toward a woman in order to demon-strate “the Excellency, and incomparable Worth of a good Wife, as also how muchHappiness doth continually attend upon that Man that enjoys her.”16


14. It is very difficult to know exactly who made the crucial decisions over picture placement (publishers? printers? compositors?) and the term designer will therefore be used to encompass allpossibilities.

15. “Modesty Amazed” (1685–88), UGL, Euing 218, EBBA 31695.16. “The Married-Mans Best Portion” (1678–88?), PL, Pepys 4.84, EBBA 21748.

figure 2. Detail from “Truths Integrity” (1655–58). Euing 358, EBBA 32055. By permission of Univer-sity of Glasgow Library, Special Collections.

It would be misleading, however, to create the impression that the essentiallybuoyant presence of the how-de-do man is unremittingly happy and wholesome.On many ballads, he stands in for characters whose romantic relationships are diffi-cult and occasionally disastrous. At the lighter end of the spectrum, he appears on“The Woman to the Plow and the Man to the Hen-Roost,” a highly successful song inwhich a husband quarrels with his wife over the relative value of their respective laborto the household economy. They swap roles, each eager to make a point, but find thatneither can cope with the other’s responsibilities. Eventually, they revert to their nor-mal duties and a reconciliation is achieved. The how-de-do man features on the sec-ond half of the ballad, reaching out his hand toward his wife, presumably to referencethe narrative’s optimistic outcome.17 On “The Poor Mans Comfort,” another versionof the same picture represents a husband, lost in despair because of his material misfortunes, who has to be consoled and counselled by his immensely loving and supportive wife. Here, perhaps, the sympathy of many consumers, schooled in theconventions of proper marital conduct, would have been complicated by the husband’slack of manly resolution and his consequent decision to “be ruled” by his wise wife inthe future. She is undoubtedly the heroine of the piece, a point that is reinforced by theassociations of the chosen tune, “Fair Angel of England.”18 In other ballads, male de -jection turns to tragedy, and the how-de-do man plays his part here, too. “The WofulComplaint, and Lamentable Death of a Forsaken Lover” introduces us to a depressed


17. “The Woman to the Plow and the Man to the Hen-Roost” (1681–84), UGL, Euing 398,EBBA 32025.

18. “The Poor Mans Comfort” (1684–86), PL, Pepys 4.92, EBBA 21756.

figure 3. Detail from “Modesty Amazed” (1685–88). Euing 218, EBBA 31695. By permission of Uni-versity of Glasgow Library, Special Collections.

man whose sweetheart has rejected him. He wanders in the woods before eventuallykilling himself, and the illustrations are arranged so that he looks straight through theplace at which a willing woman would normally be situated and on toward an image ofhis own skeleton.19 On ballads of the period, the double image of the how-de-do manapproaching a woman was so common that the absence of a female figure could itselfmake a point with eloquence.

In other cases, the positive status of the how-de-do man was complicated not byhis occasionally suicidal tendencies but by his association with tales about lustful menwho played fast and loose with the orthodox rules of sexual engagement. Of course,this approach to life probably enhanced the how-de-do man’s capacity to induce admi-ration in many consumers, particularly young men, but by endowing the illustrationwith a mildly subversive thrust, it may have muddled his appeal to others. On “TheJealous Old Dotard: or, The Discovery of Cuckoldry,” the how-de-do man representsthe “lusty Gallant” who makes love to the young wife of a cantankerous and “sapless”old man. The crucial verses are positioned right alongside the image of our hero, whoappears to be walking away from the troubled couple, having completed his business.The woman asks her husband, “Why art thou so cross my old man[?],” and he repliesconcisely, “’Cause you Cuckold me you Slut.”20 In “The Nine Maidens Fury,” a youngman plays the field (“he was for trimming both maids & women”) and almost receiveshis comeuppance. Nine local girls join forces and hatch a plan to castrate him, can-celling the operation only when the man’s true sweetheart, Susan, intervenes to urgemercy. The three recycled woodcuts are arranged with precision and skill (fig. 4). Thehow-de-do man appears on the left, strolling happily toward his beloved, a fan-carryingmaiden positioned on the right. In between them, however, the designer has cleverlyinterposed a little boxed illustration of a mini-mob of angry women, who appear to becharging toward the how-de-do man with a variety of improvised weapons in theirhands (are they going to castrate him with a toasting fork and a warming pan?). Thepackage is completed by the tune, “She got money by’t,” which already carried power-fully bawdy associations.21

On “A New Ballad of King Edward and Jane Shore,” the pictures tell the story incomparably satisfying fashion (fig. 5). The text presents an impressive list of history’smost powerful seductresses, and each verse ends with a refrain stating that none ofthem can hold a torch to England’s own Jane Shore, who famously “overcame KingEdward although he had her under.” The tone is one of mock celebration, and the bal-lad was itself a spoof upon an earlier song about a thoroughly admirable historical hero(hence the recycled tune, “St. George for England”). Jane Shore, however, was an am -bivalent figure, regularly presented in ballads and other forms of literature both as an


19. “The Woful Complaint, and Lamentable Death of a Forsaken Lover” (1663–74), UGL, Euing 391,EBBA 32015.

20. “The Jealous Old Dotard: or, The Discovery of Cuckoldry” (1672–96), British Library (here-after BL), Roxburghe 3.84-85, EBBA 30417.

21. “The Nine Maidens Fury” (1685–88), PL, Pepys 3.275, EBBA 21289. For the associations of themelody, see the broadsides listed in Claude M. Simpson, The British Broadside Ballad and Its Music(New Brunswick, N.J., 1966), 655–66.


figure 4. Detail from “The Nine Maidens Fury” (1685–88). Pepys 3.275, EBBA 21289. By permissionof the Pepys Library, Magdalene College Cambridge.

example of the dangerous consequences of pride and as a model of charity and re -morse. In this “New Ballad,” the admiration that is expressed for her is suitably compli-cated and satirical. A four-picture sequence adds an additional layer of significance:first, a warlike King Edward rides his horse; second and third, the how-de-do man,representing the monarch, walks eagerly toward a receptive (and for us increasinglyfamiliar) woman who stands in for Jane Shore; finally, we see the how-de-do managain, heading off to the right, presumably to indicate that the king has now completedhis adulterous assignation (for printers and punters alike, there was great mileage in afigure who could both arrive and depart without requiring modification). More spec-ulatively, we might consider the possibility that the pictures add an implied criticism ofthe king, who appears to have abandoned the proper business of state, referenced inthe first picture, for an affair with a harlot, represented in the other three. It may be nocoincidence that Charles II, who occupied England’s throne at the time of this ballad’spublication, was also a famous philanderer.22

Heterosexual romance of one sort or another was thus the how-de-do man’sprincipal business, but he was also deployed regularly in order to illustrate other formsof love and devotion. On “Englands Pleasant May-Flower,” he is besotted not by awoman but by the restored Charles II, himself depicted as a giant crowned number “2.”The confounding of viewer expectations by this purposeful switch surely brings anadditional frisson to the royalism of this song. In conjunction with the text, the how-de-do man is here presented as a kind of political everyman, extending the hand of rec-onciliation and friendship toward a more celebrated wanderer upon his return home:

A mighty Monarch he shall Reignwhich makes me chant and sayNow brave King Charles is come againthe twenty ninth of May.23

Another ballad, “The Worlds Wonder,” features the how-de-do man as one of twoFrench prophets whose devotion is to God and to society as a whole. They “declarethemselves to be a Thousand Years old a peice, and Preach Repentance to the World;telling what shall happen for these Nine Years following, and when the World shallend.” This ballad also allows us an insight into the filtering out of incongruous detailsthat must have been an integral feature of ballad cognition and consumption. We aretold in the text that the ancient prognosticators attire themselves in “Strange kinds ofhabit . . . , the like ne’r seen by mortal Eye,” and yet the how-de-do man wears conven-tional clothes that mortal eyes have witnessed all too often.24 Clearly, early modern


22. “A New Ballad of King Edward and Jane Shore” (1671), BL, Roxburghe 3.258, EBBA 30969. ForJane Shore as an ambivalent figure, see/hear “The Woful Lamentation of Mistris Jane Shore,” PL, Pepys1.486-487, EBBA 20229. See also Richard Helgerson, “Weeping for Jane Shore,” The South AtlanticQuarterly 98, no. 3 (1999): 451–76.

23. “Englands Pleasant May-Flower” (1660), UGL, Euing 100, EBBA 31781.24. “The Worlds Wonder” (1678–80), BL, Roxburghe 2.526-527, EBBA 31031. Some of the other

woodcuts, however, feature individuals whose clothes do look slightly more exotic.


figure 5. Detail from “A New Ballad of King Edward and Jane Shore” (1671). Roxburghe 3.258, EBBA30969. ©The British Library Board.

minds were adept at ignoring such inconsistencies as they sought to marry words andwoodcuts.

Several of the how-de-do man’s positive associations are brought together on“The Discontented Lover.” In the text, a man laments the death of his beloved andturns instead to the good fellowship provided by hearty Royalist friends who drinkhealths to their king (“We look so divine, / When our noses do shine”). Two pairs ofpictures illustrate the ballad: on the left, the how-de-do man approaches a welcomingwoman whom we have already encountered twice (here, however, she is his lost loveand the gap between them becomes poignant rather than promising); and on the right,he appears again, this time greeting a man who approaches him in similarly friendlyfashion (the text leads us to believe that they will shortly make their way, arm in arm, tothe alehouse). In this ballad, therefore, three species of love—heterosexual, homo -social, and political—are cleverly combined, and the how-de-do man brings his goodreputation to bear on all of them.25 In the disjointed England of the 1650s, with oneking dead and another in exile, it is easy to understand why this song struck a chordwith Royalists.

On other sheets, the how-de-do man’s positive vibe allows him to represent agodly counselor, a heroic pirate, and that famous personification of ale, Sir John Barley-corn. In some cases, we might imagine him not as one of the characters in a song but asthe narrator or ballad singer.26 It is really up to us to decide; the designer places the pic-tures on the sheet with an idea in mind, but a secondary placement then occurs as eachviewer/listener makes meaning of the song-sheet. On “The Plow-Mans Prophesie,” thehow-de-do man’s cordial gesture seems to direct our attention toward the other pic-tures, three in total, from his own position directly over the opening line, “Come listenall you that to mirth are inclin’d.”27 In sum, the how-de-do man is a kind of friend to usand over time, perhaps, we learn to love him as he loves others.

This is not, however, the whole story. Just over one in eight of his appearancesare far less admirable, a fact that raises interesting questions about their relationship tothose surveyed so far. Sometimes he is an out-and-out villain. On “Strange News fromWestmoreland,” for example, he stars as the evil husband who falsely denies murder-ing his wife and then, following the mysterious arrival of an avenging angel in beauti-ful human form, has his neck broken by a correspondingly ugly devil. The picturescheme, composed of four recycled woodcuts, is highly creative (fig. 6). The how-de-do man and the now-familiar welcoming woman are presented, unusually and sym-bolically, with their backs to one another across the middle of the sheet, a clearinversion of the anticipated arrangement. Her normally romantic hand gesturebecomes one of display or perhaps importunacy as she looks toward an elaborate little


25. “The Discontented Lover” (1624–80?), PL, Pepys 3.38, EBBA 21034.26. “A Godly New Ballad, Intituled, A Dozen of Points” (1658–64), UGL, Euing 126, EBBA 31834;

“The Famous Sea-Fight between Captain Ward and the Rain-Bow” (1624–80), UGL, Euing 108,EBBA 31815; “A Pleasant New Ballad to Sing Evening and Morn” (1674–79), UGL, Euing 282,EBBA 31896; “A Pretty Ballad of the Lord of Lorn” (1663–74), UGL, Euing 264, EBBA 31871.

27. “The Plow-Mans Prophesie” (1664–1703), PL, Pepys 4.297, EBBA 21959.


figure 6. Detail from “Strange News from Westmoreland” (1662-68). Euing 342, EBBA 32030. By per-mission of University of Glasgow Library, Special Collections.

woodcut in which a group of excited individuals witness the appearance of an angel inthe sky (the picture thus explains the angel’s appearance more explicitly than does thetext). On the right-hand side of the sheet, the how-de-do man has also found a newfocus, and he marches with hand extended toward an image of the devil. Overall, thisis a remarkable construction from recycled parts, most notable for the manner inwhich the old associations of the how-de-do man and his female companion aresimultaneously re cruited and redirected for dramatic effect.28

“A Caveat for Cut-Purses,” a song that began life on the lips of the ballad singerNightingale in Ben Jonson’s Bartholomew Fair (1612), is less cosmic in its themes, butit too presents the how-de-do man in an abnormally unflattering light. On the left ofthe sheet, he apparently plays a petty criminal approaching his victim, and his out-stretched hand, normally offered in friendship, is now engaged in crime. The twoimages, viewed as a sequence, create the impression that the cutpurse’s hand travelsfrom the right side of the first picture into the left side of the second picture, where ithovers with menace. Perhaps the generally good credit of the how-de-do man is in playhere, too, reminding us that criminals often deceive us by feigning affability.29 He is nomore admirable on “A Wonderful Example of God’s Justice.” This tells the sorry storyof Jasper Conningham, who proposes an incestuous union with his godly sister and ispromptly burnt to a crisp by a predictably angry God. It is surprising to see the how-de-do man here, but the significance of his appearance lies once again in the juxta -position of old associations and a new tale. Following the pattern established on manyromantic ballads, he is paired with the welcoming woman, whom he approaches witheager intent. In this ballad, however, she is revealed to be his sister, and thus the sexualundertones are wildly inappropriate.30 Beyond these examples, the how-de-do manalso appears as a decrepit old man who cannot make love to his youthful wife, a disrep-utable young man who seduces a virgin just “to get her Maiden-head,” and a wickedexcise man who meets his match in a thieving Essex girl.31 In all such cases, viewersmay recall happier moments from the how-de-do man’s life and conclude that all indi-viduals, no matter how purposefully they walk, will sometimes lose their way.

Despite these examples, the overall balance is strongly positive, and consumersmay therefore have tended to seek an optimistic interpretation of the how-de-do man’spresence in the 11.5 percent of cases where the arrangement of pictures seems to leavehis precise role more ambiguous. On “The Poor Folks Complaint,” for example, he canbe identified either as an uncharitable rich man or as the narrator who sings on behalfof society’s struggling lower orders.32 In such situations, many viewers, drawing onexisting knowledge of the image, may have been prepared to give the how-de-do man


28.“Strange News from Westmoreland” (1662–68), UGL, Euing 342, EBBA 32030.29. “A Caveat for Cut-Purses” (1647–65), BL, Roxburghe 2.46-47, EBBA 30274. The victim of the

crime appears to carry a musical instrument, though it could also be interpreted as a bag.30. “A Wonderful Example of God’s Justice” (1673–79), UGL, Euing 399, EBBA 32026.31. “The Old Mans Complaint” (1640–74), BL, Roxburghe 3.196-197, EBBA 30843; “Jenny, Jenny;

or, The false-hearted Knight” (1574–79?), BL, Roxburghe 2.221, EBBA 30682; “The Crafty Miss”(1671–1702?), PL, Pepys 3.274, EBBA 21288.

32. “The Poor Folks Complaint” (1678–88), PL, Pepys 4.340, EBBA 22003.

the benefit of the doubt. On “A Looking-Glass for a Christian Family,” he appears to beturning his back upon the devil, and it is tempting—particularly in view of his essen-tially good credit—to identify him as an adherent of virtue rather than vice (both typesare alluded to in the text).33 If ballad designers wish us to see him differently, then theymust do something to shake our associations and assumptions. On another edition ofthe same ballad, it is intriguing to note that the how-de-do man has been made tospeak: “My Gold is my God,” he declares, and thus we must reinterpret the compositescene in an instant. He is no longer rejecting evil but devoting himself to sinful materi-alism and doing the bidding of a devil who sends him on his way.34 This is one of onlytwo cases in which the how-de-do man is explicitly labeled, and the other example alsoundercuts his generally admirable reputation. On “The Rich Mens Joyes,” he appearsas “The Rich Miser,” marching toward a lowly cottage in order to collect the rent that acowering tenant can ill afford to pay (fig. 7). In this case, his outstretched hand is sud-denly grasping and greedy. The most relevant lines, as so often, are situated immedi-ately beneath the picture:

Here we may see how brave gallants can glory,having all things at their hearts content;But to the Poor ’tis a sorrowful story,when a harsh Landlord calls out for Rent.35

It seems clear that a label is required in this instance precisely because we may other-wise be tempted by our prior knowledge to find a different interpretation. No pub-lisher or printer ever identified this character explicitly as “the good fellow” or “thehonest lover,” because most viewers, drawing upon what they already knew, could beexpected to attach such labels for themselves.

�All ballads took their place in a vast interconnected web. “Intertextuality” shows theway but takes us only so far; cross-references were forged not just by words but also bypictures (and melodies, too). To study a single ballad in isolation is therefore to riskmissing a substantial proportion of its significance. These compositions were intri-cately linked, and the links were shifting and developing all the time, rather like theconnections among the 100 billion neurons that make up the human brain. Many indi-vidual pictures were used, copied, and redeployed so many times that they steadilybuilt up reputations and associations across the decades. The how-de-do man is astriking case, but a similar analysis could be applied to a wide range of comparable pic-tures. A common pattern saw the establishment of a primary thematic connection—romance in this particular case—followed by the juxtaposition of this dominant topic


33. “A Looking-Glass for a Christian Family” (1684–86), PL, Pepys 2.34, EBBA 20658.34. “A Looking-Glass for a Christian Family” (1683?), BL, Roxburghe 2.283, EBBA 30740.35. “The Rich Mens Joyes” (1688?), PL, Pepys 5.274v, EBBA 22436.

with other, contrasting narratives. On occasion, this experimentation may have beenaccidental, the product of hurry and carelessness on the part of those who set up bal-lads for the press. At other times, however, we surely see the purposeful workings ofsome highly creative minds, adept at making something new from something old.Either way, viewers faced the challenge of finding meaning in pictures that theyalready knew but now encountered afresh.

The absence of clear evidence on early modern pictorial cognition creates itsown challenge, though we can learn much from the work of modern scientists on thevital roles played in visual processing by prior knowledge, association, familiarity, thecompulsion to interpret, and the arousal that characteristically accompanies the per-ception of disjuncture.36 In all these respects, ballad pictures of the seventeenth century appear to have been designed and deployed with stimulation in mind. Thisshould really come as no surprise, but it is a feature of the genre that has often beenoverlooked. The mysterious individuals who selected from the printer’s stock thewoodcuts that would adorn a particular song managed to cater to all manner of con-sumers, ranging from those whose engagement with balladry was slight and occa-sional through to those who counted themselves experts. One role of the pictures was,of course, to convert the former into the latter with a view to boosting future sales.


36. Shimamura, Experiencing Art, 16, 107–17, 119, 203–5. See also Robert L. Solso, Cognition and theVisual Arts (Cambridge, Mass, 1994); The Visual Culture Reader, ed. Nicholas Mirzoeff (London,1998); and Richard Howells, Visual Culture (Cambridge, 2003).

figure 7. Detail from “The Rich Mens Joye” (1688?). By permission of the Pepys Library, MagdaleneCollege Cambridge.

In order to make the most of the pictures, viewers had to put in some seriouscognitive work, though we can be sure that much of it was unconscious and auto -matic.37 The evidence of the sheets suggests that seventeenth-century consumers weremuch more adept than we are at interpreting old pictures in subtly new roles andguises. They juggled prior associations with new input and worked inventively to seekout meaning, guided of course by the texts that they read, heard, or remembered (ofcourse, this all tallies with recent work from various disciplines on the active con-sumer).38 And because this process was complex, it was also highly variable and heav-ily dependent upon the precise nature of one’s foreknowledge. When one studies arecycled ballad woodcut, it can be remarkably difficult to disregard completely theassociations gathered during previous engagements with it. We can think anew, but thetraces of what went before will always remain, haunting the mind. As we have seen, thiscombination can generate significance above and beyond that which is explicitly sug-gested by the text. The nature of our earlier engagement with a picture plays a vital rolein conditioning subsequent encounters, and it also guarantees the possibility of multi-ple interpretations, varying either subtly or more radically. We can also assume thatpart of the appeal of ballad-consumption lay in the process of reinterpreting well-known woodcuts for new songs. Once again, cognitive scientists inform us helpfullythat interpretative challenges are often highly rewarding because of the manner inwhich they engage the mind.39

It is equally clear that early modern consumers were skilled at deciding whetherto integrate or ignore apparent inconsistencies between text and picture. In the balladsand pictures considered already, we might note the thousand-year-old man who doesnot look a day over forty, the king who dresses like a mere subject, and the five womenwho represent nine maidens. Other ballads present more striking examples of suchincongruity. In one, a dying man grins happily from his deathbed, perhaps because heshares it with an equally enthusiastic woman. Another song describes Shrewsbury as awonderful place to live but is illustrated by a woodcut showing a town surrounded bycannons and clearly under siege.40 Of course, it is very difficult for us to avoid a kind ofgentle, chuckling mockery, a vaguely antiquarian admiration for such ham-fistedartistry. This may not, however, help us to understand how these pictures were onceunderstood. It seems likely that minor discrepancies of detail were probably filteredout by viewers who were thoroughly accustomed to finding meaning in pictures that,to our literalist eyes, simply do not fit. Even now, experience suggests that the more oneworks with these images, the less conscious one becomes of the fact that the clothesworn by a poor countryman, for instance, look suspiciously like those of a wealthyLon don citizen. Such things cease to matter and even to register as the depth of one’sim mersion increases.


37. Shimamura, Experiencing Art, 101–2.38. See note 4.39. Shimamura, Experiencing Art, 16, 203–5.40. “The Dying Mans Good Counsel” (1681–84), PL, Pepys 2.44, EBBA 20668; “Shrowsbury for

Me,” PL, Pepys 2.135, EBBA 20755.

Arguably, the simple figures upon which this essay has concentrated werenot really simple at all. Instead, repeated exposure to the same characters in different settings seems to have enabled the gradual emergence of picture-personalities thatwere surprisingly complex and rounded. We might contrast the rigidity of the actualcarved woodblock—an essential characteristic—with the fluidity and flexibility of thepictures once they got out into the world. Though the physical appearance of the de -picted individuals changed comparatively little, the viewer had to reinterpret wood-cuts every time they took on new roles and interacted with other images, whether freshor familiar. Perhaps these little figures were like actors, each playing many parts butspecializing in those of a particular sort. And perhaps, like actors, they sometimesfound it difficult to escape their associations (the origins of the term type-cast lie in theworld of print, after all). Alternatively, familiar figures such as the how-de-do man mayhave felt more like old friends whom viewers had followed through the highs and lowsof their lives. By 1700, the how-de-do man had enjoyed multiple romances, enduredthe loss of loved ones, and undertaken several foreign voyages. He had been both apirate and a loyal sailor. He had met the king, but he had also clasped the devil’s clovenhoof. In his darker moments, he had exploited the poor, though he had also spoken outon their behalf. He had sometimes spent too long in the alehouse. He was a faithfullover, yet he had also quarreled with several wives and murdered one. He had lived to athousand and died young. He had also committed suicide at least twice. He had beenburned alive and almost castrated. He was not an altogether stable and reliable friend,but he was at least interesting to know.

� christopher marsh is Professor of Cultural History at e Queen’sUniversity of Belfast. He is the author of various works on early modern religionand culture, including Music and Society in Early Modern England (2010). He iscurrently working with Angela McShane and the musicians of e Carnival Bandon a project entitled, “Hit Songs and eir Significance in Seventeenth-CenturyEngland.”


A Woodcut and Its Wanderings in Seventeenth-Century England · Margreta de Grazia and Peter...

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